Thursday, 31 December 2015

For a while the weather had turned pretty mild and so I turned off the heating. Then it got colder again but I'm tight and didn't want to turn it back on. This is me cosy-ing up before bed.

Dec 25th. Day 359.

One of the highlights of today was feeding the ducks this morning with Baker, even if I did stand in dog poo haha.

Dec 26th. Day 360.

Time for a freshly baked cake I think!

Dec 27th. Day 361.

Have you seen a more perfect napping area?! Picture Baker alongside me and you have my afternoon.

Dec 28th. Day 362.

One of my favorite things to get as a gift is socks, especially when they are this awesome!

Dec 29th. Day 363.

This morning was brilliant. Baker and I met Dad for a walk to a different 'beach'. Where we are stood is usually covered by the mouth of the river when the tide is in but at low tide we we're lucky to have a good play time, with Bakers new Frisbee in tow. More photos from our walk will be on my main blog in a while...like a couple months haha.

Dec 30th. Day 364.

My stunning new books arrived yesterday but seeing as I already had a photo for the day I waited for today to show them off haha. I was so excited to have gotten a Brave film cell and shed more than one tear while flicking through the Disney Book <3

Day 31st. Day 365.

365!! We did it! And of course the last photo is traditionally a family portrait. Happy New Year all.

We'll be back next Saturday with our first week of daily photos for 2016 :)

Thursday, 24 December 2015

Dec 17th. Day 351.
After a looonngg day I'm finally home to my boys! (The bearded one didn't want to be photographed, so I made Baker pose with all the bags I struggled with in London.)

Dec 18th. Day 352.
Off to bed with my new Lion King cup :)

Dec 19th. Day 353.
Had to make sure I got all my London trip goodies photographed so I could get them all put away! They will all be in my quarterly haul on my main blog on the 30th of this month, so keep an eye out if you'd like to have a nose.

Dec 20th. Day 354.
While tiding out the spare room I came across my Hogwarts letter and decided to just get it framed finally - including a couple sneeky photos from the Warner Brothers Studio Tour! It's hard to photograph to show it off well, but you might be able to see that it's all sprinkled with gold glitter.

Dec 21st. Day 355.
We don't do many gifts in my house, but I went off to deliver the first of the year to a special friend this morning. It was nice to get a quick catch up in before the Christmas season.

Dec 22nd. Day 356.
More blog post photographing today and this one in particular has been left pretty late by my standards. I didn't decorate until a day or two before we left for London, then we were away for 3 days and time got away from me. That post will be up on Christmas day ;)

Dec 23rd. Day 357.
Tonight it was approaching bedtime and I still hadn't taken a photo. I didn't want to get this close to completion and fail again so decided to take the tripod into the front garden. The clouds were pretty eerie and moving super fast but were hard to photograph what with the moon being so bright and the clouds so dark. Therefore I had a little play around and decided to do a slow shutter. This was the best shot.

Saturday, 19 December 2015

Packing up, photographing and getting excited to post off our little care package to Monkey World in Dorset. I have done a care package of some sort for the last few years - for a local cat and dog shelter, for Operation Christmas child and this year Monkey world - it's so much fun to pick out things and send it on it's way!

People have asked if I was doing a blog post on it but I am waiting until next year as I think more people need to spread their kindness of supporting charities throughout the year and not just at Christmas time. Although obviously this is a brilliant time to give too, it is when the majority of people are most charitable.

Dec 11th. Day 345.

A walk along the river with B-man and my Mam to get a photo for our Christmas card to go in with our box shown above! We took a few, with many out takes...this was one of the least funny ones but Baker wanted up. You can check out a sillier one here.

Dec 12th. Day 346.

M&Ms! <3

Dec 13th. Day 347.

What an astounding morning I had! When walking home from work, from my last shift for a full 7 days, I spotted this guy in the distance. I got home, grabbed my camera and shot straight back out the door.

About 45 minutes later with completely numb hands I returned home with lots of photos of this awesome guy as well as all of my usual species of bird and finally my first young Robin of the year :)

Dec 14th. Day 348.

All packed and ready to go in the morning!

Dec 15th. Day 349.

Happy Birthday Mam :)

Dec 16th. Day 350.

Our second day in the capital and finally, 3 years after it first opened to the public, I got to walk through the doors into the Hogwarts Great Hall and beyond. Magical doesn't even begin to cover what it meant to me and many tears were shed. Now I have a few hundred photos to sort through that will most likely fill at the very least 4 blog posts... I'm glad to have those as memories though, as it was probably my first and only visit.

Dec 5th. Day 339.
Today the weather worsened. You will have seen the absolute devastation that Cumbria and the Borders have faced on the news and what with being on the border of both of those and living right next to a river I kind of got a little paranoid and started taking stuff upstairs. Jake then reminded me that we live at the mouth of the river...where it is tidal water and the extra water was all just heading out to sea. I feel stupid for being so silly when others have lost their worlds. My heart has been with everyone effected all this week. <3

Dec 6th. Day 340.
It's 10 days until we finnnally get to visit the Harry Potter Studio Tour and I'm getting ready by watching the movies yet again. Jake is on night shift this week, so while he was in bed Baker and I had cuddles on the sofa to watch the Philosophers Stone. :)

Dec 7th. Day 341.

Baker and I met his Granda from work today, walked up to his house to help set up his new wifi and ended up staying for tea so we could see his Granny after she got in from work. This dog is obsessed with his Granny...like you'd think there were magnets in each of them because he is glued to her wherever she goes!

Dec 8th. Day 342.

Finished off some DIY festive decor today. I have a few odd bits already up but the tree won't be going up until Sunday (the traditional day that it is supposed to go up), that is if I decide to put it up this year.

Dec 9th. Day 343.
It's not often Baker and I go along the river anymore. There has been word of a dog with kennel cough still being taken out and let to run around with other dogs along there and it's not often that there isn't anyone there, but this morning after getting back from the Post Office I decided we'd give it a go to take some photos and let little man have a run.
We spotted this beautiful little female blackbird foraging for food when we first arrived. What with being raised alongside Jake and I photographing wildlife he is pretty good at sitting like a good lad while Mammy takes a few photos which is fab. Then we had some off the lead time, playing fetch with a stick and Baker being cheeky and trying to jump off the edge into the river a couple times (which is higher than it seems)!
We got a couple nice photos of him in the glow of the sun and then headed home. It was lovely.

Thursday, 3 December 2015

Nov 26th. Day 330.
On my way home from work the sun was just starting to rise and I knew it was gonna be an awesome one. So when I got back I unlocked the door, grabbed my camera and ran back out again! A half hour later and a beautiful sunrise watched, I walked the long 2.5minutes home :P

Yesterday my good friend Laura came up to stay the night so we could get an early start to drive up to Edinburgh! Unfortunately we wasn't aware that the day after 'black Friday' would be so crazy and there were even queues to get into Primark :O We did grab a couple things though and although the ice skating was too expensive and no longer in the actual gardens, my Mam and Dad did see Dynamo! haha

Nov 29th. Day 333.

Two weeks still to go but being the ever organized person and loving packing I sorted out my outfits for our London trip :P

Nov 30th. Day 334.

It's rare that we sit and actually watch something together without me being on the laptop or Jake on the Xbox. We couldn't decide on a movie because out of the zillions on Netflix we have either seen them, don't want to watch them or can't agree on them haha so we watched a few episodes of a show about 'Superhuman's or something.

Dec 1st. Day 335.

The first day of the last month in my first calendar.

Dec 2nd. Day 336.

Bless my little guy. He remembers exactly what to do with his advent calendar and used his little paw to open the drawer. The only thing is he thinks he should open them all in one day...:P

Thursday, 26 November 2015

I bought a couple of Christmas decorations. I am one of those people screaming inside that it is no where near Christmas and the songs in stores and people counting the days are far too early, but technically I only bought them and haven't put them up so that's okay. Okay?

November 20th. Day 324.

Homemade lentil soup time yo!

November 21st. Day 325.

Can't believe these finally arrived today. The time is getting closer. Excited, scared, nervous. I know you have all seen it multiple times, but London is like 350 miles away and it costs a lot to get there and have a place to stay. (FYI I have edited out the date and time we are going, safety reasons ya know!)

November 22nd. Day 326.

This image pretty much sums up our household. All it needs is a dog toy to complete it to be honest.

November 23rd. Day 327.

I know what I just said about Christmas....

November 24th. Day 328.

Yeah. I did it again.

November 25th. Day 329.

So I had to go to A&E but thankfully it wasn't serious. I still had to get little tablets though and for someone who doesn't take any sort of medication/drugs besides liquid Piriton, and can'r swallow tablets either, it's not the most fun. In comes Rocco! See last weeks post for my views on 'broken biscuits'.

Thursday, 19 November 2015

Back to the Thursday routine of meeting Mam after work and popping over to town, tonight we went to out semi-regular watering hole. I don't drink hot drinks so of course the Cranberry and Raspberry drink is mine. Mam picked me up a gingerbread man too but when she saw it was broken went to put it back. I said not to because most people don't want broken things and others would put it back too, but it doesn't effect how it tastes and I felt sorry for him still smiling even with a broken neck.

Nov 13th. Day 317.

These actually arrived yesterday but for some reason were taken next door instead of to us and they only brought them round after 7pm when I was already getting sorted for bed. So, here they are. My 2016 calendars.

I still have 7 for sale so please do get in touch if you'd like one. I have the full list of photos included too if you'd like to see them before buying. They are £10.00 plus postage.

Nov 14th. Day 318.

I woke at 6am, after having gone to sleep at 9pm, to the horrific news of the previous nights events in Paris. I walked to work feeling physically sick and turned on the news instead of my usual 3rd Rock from the Sun. I cried through me whole shift and then again on the phone to my Mam while I walked home. I stayed off social media and was glued to all news websites all day and exhausted myself with crying but I didn't know why - it's not like I personally lost someone or witnessed it and felt guilty for being so upset.

After falling asleep at 5pm hugging Baker I woke up to a message on Facebook asking if I'd been along to photograph the border bridge as it had been lit up in tricolore. I grabbed my camera, coat, tripod (as it was pitch black outside) and ran along the road to the side of the river. It was pouring down of rain so I only had a short time to get the photo I wanted without ruining my camera. This is what I managed and I have to say I'm pretty happy with it.
I didn't want to leave. It was so beautiful and so peaceful compared to the scenes in which it was a tribute for.

Nov 15th. Day 319.

This little guy is poorly. Like his Mam he suffers from allergies and this week has been pretty bad for us both. If I could take away his aliments (right now it's affecting his right ear), I'd gladly deal with it so he would be back to his normal self.

Nov 16th. Day 320.

After a busy day of housework and blogging I went to bed with my Disney brochure (although it's already booked and not via the brochure) to look at the pictures and think about how Disneyland Paris is coping this week.

I have been appalled by some of the selfish people who can do nothing but moan that the park was closed. People have lost their lives, lost their family members and friends and you are annoyed that your spoiled child doesn't get to meet Elsa? Get your priorities straight and show some respect. Yes I know what a Disney holiday costs, I've done it a few times now believe it or not, but if I had been there this week I'd have been respectful and appreciative to the staff who have gone to such amazing efforts to still keep you all safe and entertained in the hotels.

Nov 17th. Day 321.

I love when someone from across the world orders one of my prints! <3

Nov 18th. Day 322.

It's crazy how quick the weather can change. One minute it was bright and dry and the next I thought my windows were going to smash! It wasn't just rain however, but hail stones!! Ahhh!